


Relief of Rain

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [30]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 05:09:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15965375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Lestallum really needed the rain. The heat from the power plant stuffed the narrow alleyways with stifling humidity, and while Noctis didn’t mind the look of a sweaty, half-stripped Nyx shedding more clothes the higher the sun rose every day, he could do without the awful stickiness of his own shirt clumping against his back and the sweat itching at the crown of his scalp.He could also do without being stranded on a bench in the middle of that much-needed downpour.





	Relief of Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aithilin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/gifts).



> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/177882629572/nyxnoct-i-never-liked-the-rain-until-you) for #30 in [this prompt post](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/176527688947/collectivemood), requested by [aithilin.](http://aithilin.tumblr.com/)

“I never liked the rain until you.”

“Why?” Nyx chuckled. “Because of my damp and dreary personality?”

Noctis fumbled with a smile because he didn’t know how to elaborate. He didn’t even know why he’d said that. But then, words always did fall a bit looser around Nyx than they did with anyone else.

Silly words. Stupid words. The kind of words he’d trained himself to catch before he lost them to a cringe, or a laugh, or a saccharine smile forcing itself to indulge in his awkwardness like a parent with a child, rather than a lover that actually found anything he had to say interesting or romantic or worth taking seriously.

Nyx never patronized him like that though. He laughed sometimes, sure, but it was always because Noctis wanted him to. He knew when Noctis _wanted_ him to laugh at what he said, or just to listen – or to pretend like he was when he really just wanted to sit and stare at Noctis talk. Nobody ever wanted to do that; to listen, or to look – not like Nyx did; not like he was more than a script written by somebody else, scribbled on the back of his hand to remember his lines.

“Well, now you’ve got me nervous,” Nyx said, shifting beneath the leather canopy of his jacket over their heads. “Am I that much of a wet blanket, or what?”

“Nyx, you’ve told me yourself, on numerous occasions, that you’re ‘the hottest thing since Ifrit erupted Ravatogh.’ You’d incinerate a wet blanket.”

“I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

Noctis bullied a shoulder against his, feigning a shake of his head and a roll of his eyes at Nyx’s exaggeratedly high opinion of himself. Well… perhaps not _too_ exaggerated – Noctis really did think that he was hotter than a brushfire, after all (but it wouldn’t do to go stoking Nyx’s ego too much).

An errant drop of rain dolloped atop Noct’s nose. He shimmied deeper within the shoulder of Nyx’s jacket, crowding himself further into his side. The dark warmth suppressed the chill of the rain sighing against the flagstones, the thicker streams that were caught in the gutters patting out an erratic rhythm against the awning above.

Lestallum really needed the rain. The heat from the power plant stuffed the narrow alleyways with stifling humidity, and while Noctis didn’t mind the look of a sweaty, half-stripped Nyx shedding more clothes the higher the sun rose every day, he could do without the awful stickiness of his own shirt clumping against his back and the sweat itching at the crown of his scalp.

He could also do without being stranded on a bench in the middle of that much-needed downpour, but that was what he deserved for entrusting the hotel room key to a couple of guys that were as distracted by this city as three kittens in a sushi restaurant.

He’d already texted Ignis to make sure that their delay wasn’t the result of some ambush by Imperial spies – ever since the Fall, every little inconvenience tugged at the edges of his mind with _what if_ – but he was assured that they were merely stuck in a crowd at the convenience store, trying to wait out the worst of the rain.

“You know he’s just using that as an excuse to hang around the produce section a little longer while we catch our deaths out here,” Nyx had teased.

And Noctis had just pursed his lips to act like he was holding back a laugh instead of the lump in his throat. Nyx very nearly did catch his death, after all. And there were more still who really had. But he didn’t want to fall to pieces over a simple turn of phrase so, he’d just hunkered down with Nyx beneath his coat and distracted him with silly flirtations about raindrops while they waited to be let back into their room instead.

“I used to hate it when it rained,” Noctis confessed now, drawn back into memory by the gray shrouds steaming off the hot pavement. “It always meant being cooped up in the Citadel all day. No fishing, no playing outside, and it always seemed to make my knee act up.”

“Does it still?”

Noctis glanced up to the immediate pull of Nyx’s stare, pressed close between the confines of his coat. He smiled, warmed by the concerned crease between Nyx’s eyes, struggling not to stare down at the epicenter of his old injury like he could fight off any of that lingering pain with his glare alone.

“Sometimes. Not today,” Noctis assured him.

“And now you like rain,” Nyx went on for him, pulling his eyes back up to puddle in relief against his cheeks. “Because of me?”

Noctis shrugged, slow and sure. “I like a lot of things because of you, now.”

“I think you give me too much credit, little king.”

_And you don’t give yourself enough._

For all of Nyx’s self-congratulatory boasting, for all that he teased about the grandeur of all his exploits, and the excellence of his own physique, it was all said in jest, not meant to be taken seriously. He was humble, and loathed more of himself than he loved, Noctis knew that. He kept those secrets of self-consciousness, and self-hatred for all of his failures, locked safe in his own heart. Along with everything else that he could ever use to prove to Nyx that he was greater than his past mistakes.

“It was raining… the day after Insomnia,” Noctis mused. “I hated it again, then. Because I thought… I really thought you didn’t make it.” His throat thickened on the only days-old grief of everything he’d lost in the Fall – and on all the gratitude for the things he hadn’t. “I thought that, every day that it rained from then on, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. Because all I would think about was you, and how you weren’t there next to me on that hill…”

There was still too much about the rain that left his stomach feeling sour. The steam from the roads still reminded him of smoke across the bay, the air still felt as cold as the breath of death that coasted across the bridge, and his heart still ached for the stormy nights in the Citadel when his father would tell him bedtime stories where he played the hero so Noctis wouldn’t hear the thunder.

Rain now would forever be bittersweet. Because on one coast of the storm he was haunted by that hill, by Cor’s grave voice screened in static, by the smell of metal in the sky, by the horror of everything he hadn’t said to his father before it was too late; but on the other coast – the one he sat on now, on this bench, where the world felt infinitely smaller than everything expected of him – he had the stories of sailors coming into port to an island of festivity; of dancing in the rain to welcome the relief, rather than flee the downpour; of Nyx in the middle of the street, face turned up to the deluge like a king to the gods, smile dripping with silver droplets beneath the streetlights.

His face was turned down now, searching the absence of space between them for something to say, something to give, something to do to ease the pain carried up that hill over the bay. Something to take the sting out of the King’s sacrifice, something to promise him in a war where every promise felt as delicate as a paper, torn in two and scattered to the fires that burned their home.

Noctis dipped his head beneath the coat and kissed him. Slow, savoring it. Tasting the chill on his chapped lips, a brief bite of cold that melted in a moment to the warm, sky-spilled flavor of rain. He didn’t want to think about how, or why, or what was ahead of him now.

He just wanted to feel like there was no loneliness in rainfall. He wanted to remember those stories Nyx used to tell him when they were shuttered in his apartment: that with a storm came hope; that there was rebirth in every drop, that there was something to look forward to when it was all over.

Maybe the rain on that day hadn’t rebirthed his father. Maybe it was just too late for him. But maybe it had doused those holy fires that had nearly taken Nyx. Maybe that rain really did breeze his lost sailor home.

He wanted to remember that. He wanted to remember how to love the rain.

“I’m just glad you’re here,” Noctis breathed, barely pulling away. “That’s all I was trying to say.”

“I know,” Nyx murmured, burn-scarred fingers playing lightly with the ends of Noct’s hair. “I hear you.”

Nyx pulled him closer than space would allow, slouching them underneath his coat to curl as close as the narrow bench could fit them. It didn’t feel quite so cold like this, huddled underneath his coat, waiting for the rain to pass. Now, Noctis was in no rush for it to end.


End file.
